I had a dream that many prominent members of the Linux community were dressed in Nazi SS uniforms on the Arctic ice, clubbing baby seals to death.

I can’t bear the thought that so many Linux people may secretly be Nazi seal murderers, so I demand that they be excluded from any future Linux-related events or conferences that I might wish to attend. My nightmare and the strength of my personal reaction to it are conclusive proof that they are guilty.

I can’t remember all those who were identified in my dream right now, so I need to be able to point the finger at any time in the future and have any individual shunned – excluded and banned from events, conferences, mailing lists, and open source projects in general…with any who communicate with them (or, worse, support the evil-doers by pretending to a moderate, reasonable, rational, and/or evidence-based stance) being likewise exiled.

After all, remember that even in these enlightened times there is still a seething culture of penguin-supremacism in the Linux community – overtly pushing the agenda of the pure penguin race over the pernicious and corrosive evil of seals….this culture of seal-murder must be stamped out by whatever means necessary. Zero tolerance for seal-murder apologists!

Thank you for understanding and supporting me in my very real fears. You make the world a safer place for everyone.

I can’t think you really are saying documented acts of agression are the same as some dream you allegedly had… You may think you are proving a point (obsession to a single issue is bad), but you are only proving you had to go for some imaginary event to find something worse than the issue you are saying is not such big of an issue.

Who says he (or I, for that matter) does? I think he seriously has a point, which, in my opinion is that some of us are getting tired/strained by the constant unfounded accusations hurled at us, for no other reason than to gain power. It’s much like crying “Catch the thief, he has my knife in his back!” Or like saying “Anyone who pleads not guilty, simply has not yet been sufficiently investigated.” I hate people who make such statements, and don’t care in the very least if they are women. When someone questioned the validity of certain statistics, (apparently) someone else – purportedly a woman – stated that arguing with those statistics would be entirely even if they were fabricated, and their numbers were off by an order of magnitude, and everyone knew it, too. This is so dishonest I have no more civil words to say to that, and – imho – does a severe disservice to the original cause. But who cares – I am only a man, meaning, I shouldn’t enjoy full human rights anyway, right?

Ok, this, at least, is some argument, not meaningless (if not hateful) parody.

I don’t think anyone ask every male to plead guilty, i think what’s asked is for each one to look at his own actions, and try to be honest about if it was (intentionally or not) harmful. It’s easy to make mistakes, specially when it’s the norm, the only way forward is to acklowledge there is a problem, and when a male calls out another for his behaviour, it’s not wich hunt, it’s calling out bad behaviour when one sees it, because if men doesn’t acknowledge the behaviour are bad, it’s all to easy for the abuser to turn down the complaints as invalid.

Now, about invalid arguments, statistics can be discussed, we are probably talking about difference of wages for a particular job/skill level, for men and for women, sure this is obviously a different number than the difference of wages between men and women, because obviously men and women doesn’t do the same jobs, or have the same skill levels? It’s not hard to think that maybe this is not entirely justified that the average woman do a job that earn her considerably less than the average man. And it should be a fact open to questions.

Computer science, for example, is full of quite good, well paying jobs, and i don’t know of them that women should be any less qualified to do than men, but in the few companies i worked for, i couldn’t find better than a 1/10 ratio, and sadly, in the open source movement, things are even worse, one can wonder why, but not for very long, because it’s easy to see that there is something in our culture (in CS) that makes it quite harder for women to join, sometimes it takes the form of legaly senctionable abuses (in conferences, some men just can’t behave), and sometimes it’s way more subtle, but so common, that it’s both hard to see for us anymore, and incredibly appalling for most women that dare to step in.

Deniying there is a problem, as the post here do by comparing it to a completly imaginary issue, is the proof of either completly blindness to the issue, or of real hate against women, and trying to save the “boy-only” mentalitly to keep them out, because it’s so much fun without them here…

Because if you feel threatenned by a few men either apologising for their past behaviour, or calling out the worst behaviour or others, then you are just starting to feel what too much women experience when coming to CS/FOSS, a feeling that you don’t belong here, I think it’s for the best, if some start to feel that.

After all, remember that even in these enlightened times there is still a seething culture of penguin-supremacism in the Linux community – overtly pushing the agenda of the pure penguin race over the pernicious and corrosive evil of seals…